Jun­gle Cruise

Expec­ta­tion man­age­ment is a vast­ly under­val­ued skill. Get it right and you can deliv­er much bet­ter results than your audi­ence ever imag­ined pos­si­ble – even if you knew the odds were actu­al­ly in your favour to begin with. So to Jun­gle Cruise, a Dis­ney adven­ture based on one of their theme park rides.

It’s 1916 at the Roy­al Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety in Lon­don. Dr Lily Houghton (Emi­ly Blunt) illic­it­ly search­es for a mys­te­ri­ous arrow­head that can unlock the secrets of a ​“tree of life” in the Ama­zon jun­gle, while her broth­er Mac­Gre­gor (Jack White­hall) tries to con­vince the Society’s all-male pro­fes­sors that an expe­di­tion to find the tree and its petals could yield won­drous advances for med­i­cine. Mac­Gre­gor is laughed off stage but Lily snags the arrow­head right under the nose of evil Ger­man aris­to Prince Joachim (Jesse Ple­mons) and his min­ions, who are also after the tree, only for nefar­i­ous means.

The sib­lings begin a per­ilous boat trip up the Ama­zon at an inaus­pi­cious Brazil­ian back­wa­ter, where they enlist wise­crack­ing cap­tain Frank Wolff (Dwayne John­son) to help find the tree. Skint Frank runs tourist cruis­es on the riv­er, scam­ming them with staged ​“attacks” from natives. Before long our trio are fight­ing undead con­quis­ta­dors trapped in the jun­gle and the vil­lain­ous prince who has fol­lowed them to South Amer­i­ca in a submarine.

John­son lands more jokes in his open­ing scene than some com­e­dy actors man­age in 90 min­utes. He also wres­tles a leop­ard. Blunt is the supe­ri­or action star on show here though – fear­less­ly fight­ing, jump­ing and climb­ing like a cyn­i­cism-free female Indi­ana Jones. White­hall, a pop­u­lar if divi­sive British TV per­son­al­i­ty, is sym­pa­thet­ic and amus­ing. A scene in which Mac­Gre­gor comes out to Frank (albeit with a degree of ambi­gu­i­ty) is han­dled del­i­cate­ly, and feels like a land­mark moment for a Dis­ney fam­i­ly film. Else­where, Paul Gia­mat­ti makes the most of a small part as Ama­zon boat big­wig Niro, while Ple­mons is great value.

Hilar­i­ous, filthy moments of innu­en­do pep­per the script, the influ­ence of Bad San­ta writ­ers Glenn Ficar­ra and John Requa (who com­prise two-thirds of the writ­ing team along­side Michael Green, who co-wrote Logan and Blade Run­ner 2049) keen­ly felt. The final act drags a lit­tle and there’s some ropey CGI in places, but direc­tor Jaume Col­let-Ser­ra keeps the ener­gy up and the per­for­mances live­ly as he man­ages the con­sid­er­able bud­get step-up from his usu­al (excel­lent) B‑movie fare.

Even with such like­able, charis­mat­ic leads, few could have hoped for a more enjoy­able romp from a film that essen­tial­ly cross­es The Mum­my with Pirates of the Caribbean, and is based on a theme park ride that was itself orig­i­nal­ly inspired by John Huston’s 1955 adven­ture The African Queen. Expec­ta­tions be damned. Sub­tly pro­gres­sive and tremen­dous fun, Jun­gle Cruise is the best fam­i­ly block­buster of the year.